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spaceScan plugin

Jul 24, 2011 KepocuH link
HOTFIX to 1.3.1 available (See the Changelog)

Download: http://www.voupr.com/downloads/spacescan-1.3.1.zip

Any comments and feature requests are appreciated.

About:
spaceScan is a plug-in scans space for objects of your interests. The scan is ASYNCHRONOUS. This means that you may do any other things while space is scanned for those objects you interested in. There is no type of object recognition, so there is no difference for the scanner if the object is ship or asteroid or a cargo crate. By default the scan speed is about 20 objects per second. You may adjust this scan speed though.

Features:
* Fancy ASYNCHRONOUS lookup through near space objects
* Scan heart-bit sound
* Sound notification on search match
* Adjustable scan speed
* Adjustable radars rescan heart-bit
* Prioritized objects lookup
* Per character persistent settings

NOTE: Sounds are taken from SoundAlertSuite plug-in.

Use:
There are some basic commands you can invoke from your chat input field to tune the scanner and to set the objects of your interests.

1. Add an object to search list
To add an object to search list you need to know at least part of its name. Like if you are looking for guardians CPUs you may simply add substring "guard" to the search list. Of course if there are some guardians flying around those will be found too :)

SYNOPSYS:

/scan_add case-insensitive-list-of-substrings

Example:

/scan_add grade posi

This will make scanner to look for any objects consisting "grade" and "posi" in their names and will find those "Cybernetics Grade FF" or "Hive Positron Cannon" objects.

NOTE: The search list declares the search priority ! Near space will be scanned for objects in your search list. This means you will scan the space for the first object of your interest then for the second and so on until you get to the end of your list or find your object.

2. Remove search pattern from scan list:
To remove a search pattern you may use scan_del command:

SYNOPSYS:

/scan_del case-insensitive-exact-matching-string

Example:

/scan_del posi
/scan_del grade

3. Start/stop scanning
To start or stop space scan you have to execute scan_toggle command.

SYNOPSYS:

/scan_toggle

It is very practical to bind this command to a key:

/bind F2 scan_toggle

Now every time you press F2 you are start the near space scanner or stop it if it is already running.

4. Display a scan list:

To display current scan list you have to invoke scan_list command:

SYNOPSYS:

/scan_list

NOTE: There is a default list already available immediately after install. You may wish to check this list and adjust as you find it appropriately.

5. Radar rescan heart-bit.
You are usually moving in space and radar picture is very dynamic. Depends on your speed objects will appear or disappear on/from radar as fast as you are moving. The very basic mechanics of space scanner resets radar data every 20 seconds by default. Then the search starts over again. If you are moving fast then you have to rescan more often. So you need to decrease rescan timeout. If there are hundreds or thousand objects (all roids are included) you need more time to scan the space before rescan is issued, because the rescan will start search over again. So you may never find your object of interest between those thousands if rescan timeout set too low. You have to adjust dynamically rescan timeout based on your speed and amount of objects in space around you. Therefore is a set_rescan_timer command available:

SYNOPSYS:

/set_rescan_timer NUMBER
The NUMBER is a positive integer larger then 4999 measured in milliseconds and represent a timeout to the next rescan.

/rescan_timer_delta NUMBER
Set rescan timer increment/decrement delta. The NUMBER is a positive integer measured in milliseconds.

/rescan_timer_inc
Increment rescan timer on rescan delta specified by rescan_timer_delta

/rescan_timer_dec
decrement rescan timer on rescan delta specified by rescan_timer_delta

It is very practical to bind last two commands to some keys to adjust rescan timer dynamically.

Example:
/set_rescan_timer 10000
/rescan_timer_delta 500
/bind F11 rescan_timer_dec
/bind F12 rescan_timer_inc

The above commands set the rescan heart-bit to 10 seconds, rescan delta to 0.5 seconds and bind rescan increment and decrement to F12 and F11 appropriately. Now you may adjust your rescan heart-bit dynamically as you fly without typing a commands.

GENERAL NOTE:

Your search list, rescan delta, and rescan timer timeout are persistent settings and may be found in vendetta config.ini
Those settings are independent for every of your characters.

----
Changes in 1.1:

1. Changed search priority. Lookup is ordered by search list elements now. First element of the search list would be looked through all the radar objects first and the last element will be the last to look for.

2. Added rescan heart-bit timer reset. If you have many objects around you'd like to have heartbit less oft as it is by default. If your fly quite fast you'd probably like to have rescans more often.
SYNOPSIS:

/set_rescan_timer NUMBER

Where the NUMBER is the timeout until next rescan measured in milliseconds. This number have to be greater then 4999.

3. Added sound for "Found" condition.
----

ChangeLog for 1.2:

Search list , rescan heartbit timeout and scan timeout are made persistent now. This means your changes to search list are permanent and you do not need to change them every login.

NOTE: Those changes properties are separate for each of your characters. So if your character A set rescan to 5000 , your character B will not aware of those changes.

ChangeLog for 1.3:

Following commands are added:

* rescan_timer_delta
* rescan_timer_inc
* rescan_timer_dec

Changlog for 1.3.1

Save of the search-list has been broken in 1.3. Please update to 1.3.1 to fix this issue.